Necrosis

The first few scenes of the movie made me expect something really gross, like cannibalism and lots of gore. In fact, this movie has no gore at all - except for a few gunshot wounds which are so inconsistent that they made me laugh instead of making me say; "Ouch, that's got to hurt!" All right, if it has no gore, at least i expect some good plot and at least a 3/5 score acting. A real shame, because none of these objectives were met; the plot is shallow with some flashes of brilliancy now and then (psychological terror) but truth be told - i wasn't impressed. Not even scared. The other weak points are the actors - really, that kind of bad acting was not seen since... well... i have never seen it - or maybe i have (one movie comes to my mind but i won't tell the name, let's just say THAT movie takes place in 2012).

Unfortunately, i don't have anything positive to say about this movie, except the ending which is not expected, and that makes it somewhat brilliant.

Do not waste your precious time with this title, those few strong points (i am being generous) are not worth wasting 1 hour and 13 minutes, that's how long this charade lasts.

The whole 'cabin in the woods' trope has been a sub-genre of horror for quite some time. Granted, here in 'Necrosis' it's a cabin in the snowy mountains, but the principal is just the same. A group of friends go to stay in a remote location and fall foul to some sort of supernatural force.

This time we have three couples who stay in the mountains, who obviously ignore the cliched old man who warns them not to stay there. Two of which are single, so guess who will be coupling up? One of the actresses can't really act in the beginning, but she does get a bit better as the movie goes on. The dialogue between the cast isn't badly written, but it doesn't really save it as it never really gets going and many scenes could be easily cut.

There's brief nudity if that's any incentive, but there's no real gore or creature effects to talk about. I paused it what I thought was roughly half way through. Turned out I was forty-five minutes into its hour and fifteen minutes runtime. Basically, not much had happened yet - bar a couple of jump scares. That should tell you everything you need to know about the film. It's not the worst I've ever sat through, but it will hardly be remembered among the heaps of other similar offerings.

I've recently been going through a whole stockpile of bad films, although this film I wouldn't necessarily call it bad but it wasn't good either, it had an okay premise and was able to draw my attention but it wasn't long when this film started feeling like the plot was going nowhere, I mean the pace was as if it didn't move at all it just floated around for 90 minutes.

The acting was average, although the characters weren't really developed and came across as cardboard cutouts and sometimes the cast looked more like they were just reciting a bunch of lines instead of really acting.

The plot itself actually did have potential but the execution is the main problem here, the pace like I said is as if it just floats around and feels like its never gonna go anywhere and neither one of the characters are likable and you never start to care for them because they are so under developed they might as well be rocks.

Honestly, the only good quality about this film is that it could just be the cure for insomnia because I've never been so bored for 90 minutes.

Michael "Mike" Scottfield (Robert Michael Ryan) invites his girlfriend Karen (Tiffany) and his friends Matt (George Stults), Jerry (James Kyson-Lee), Samantha (Danielle De Luca) and Megan (Penny Drake) to travel to Sierra, Nevada, to spend the weekend in his cottage in the top of the mountain. When they stop in a bar, the strange Seymour (Michael Berryman) advises that the top of the mountain is not a safe place, and Mike explains to his friends that in 1846, a group of travelers was trapped for months in the mountain while traveling to California. They go insane with the starvation, and without any food, they start killing each other to eat. The episode was known as the Donner massacre.

While driving a snowmobile, Jerry sees a ghost girl that advises him that the place is not safe. The six friends are surprised by the severe snow and are trapped in the cabin. When they go to the shed to start the generator, they find the body of the caretaker Lyle (John Dobroth) lying on the snow. Sooner Jerry sees other eerie creatures wandering around the cabin. When Matt learns that Jerry is under the medication of the antipsychotic Seraquin, they fear that Jerry may be driving crazy.

"Necrosis" is a low-budget psychological horror movie that uses the idea of "The Shinning" combined with "Evil Dead", with a man that goes insane in an isolated cabin threatening the lives of his girlfriend and friends. The plot is slowly constructed and the greatest flaw is the lack of explanation why Mike brings his friends to a cabin that belongs to his family for many years in a season of severe snow and without supplies. He certainly should have an idea of the difficulties that they might have in that season. When I saw the IMDb rating, I was afraid that "Necrosis" would be a deceptive film; however, I realize that actually this film is underrated in IMDb. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sangue na Neve" ("Blood on the Snow")

Had a chance to watch this over the weekend, and found that I enjoyed it despite a few shortcomings. As a fan of Heroes, I was really happy to see James Kyson Lee not playing a token "Asian guy", but in fact takes center stage and does a good job, IMO.

The rest of the cast holds up well too. The pacing is good for the most part, but a little slow where is shouldn't have been. Which leads me to my only real complaint about this film and that it doesn't have the amount of blood/gore/cannibalism I expected to see based on the trailer and DVD art. They only touch upon the cannibalism in a few flashbacks (which looked cool) but I was really looking forward to seeing more of that stuff appear later in the film.

There are some decent blood scenes (removing some buckshot comes to mind) that might make one a bit squeamish, but as a whole the movie fell a little short to be considered a true "horror" for my tastes.